From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the tricky balances in human relationships and conversations is the balance between what we say, what we intend, and what the other person hears. Each of these is, in large part, context based — that is, informed by history, relational and environmental factors, and the intersection of those various pieces.

There are at least two or three different Christian virtues always at work in human communication. The first is speaking the truth. We always seek to say something that both resides in fact but also comes from the truth of our own experience. The second is speaking with charity and kindness whenever we can. The third is listening with a kind of assumption of good intent unless we have some strong reason to suspect someone’s motives.

There are also at least two more that have theological significance. The first (really fourth) is honestly saying where someone’s speech has caused hurt or harm — regardless of the intention. And the fifth is, perhaps, the hardest: hearing that critique with an open heart and responding not based on what you intended but based on how what was said impacts someone else.

This last is a crucial aspect of reconciliation — we are always operating on the terms of the party that is hurt because the experience of the one first speaking is not the only valid experience. What they say, regardless of intent, becomes part of someone else’s experience and their experience interprets what is said. We can’t dictate how that happens, we can only respond honestly and with compassion and, where necessary, with contrition.

All of that is a preamble to apologizing for a brief portion at the end of my rector’s address. I mentioned Mike Tyson, the boxer, and jokingly referred to him as a noted theologian and philosopher. Now, I remember Tyson as a boxer. He was at the height of his career when I was boxing in high school. The quote I mentioned was one that all of us knew.

That said, that is not how many, many people remember him. What they remember is that he was arrested and convicted of sexual assault. When I wrote that bit, it was late in the evening, I was trying to figure out how to wrap up a long sermon and a long address and the quote popped into my head — so I threw it in without thinking too much about it.

However, for those who have experienced assault or know someone who has, my relatively thoughtless inclusion of him could very easily have been a painful reminder. Moreover, it could have been a reminder of how we too easily “rehabilitate” the reputations of people in our culture who do not demonstrate contrition or regret for their actions.

So, I return to those first few thoughts about human communication. I appreciate someone speaking the truth in love and with charity. I hope folks will assume my only intention was to wrap up a long address with something that popped into my head meaning no offense. I hear the person’s good intention in writing to challenge me about it and I hope they recognize no ill intent in my own address. Regardless of my intent, I hear and acknowledge that I should have thought more about a potentially painful example. 

I want to apologize for not thinking it through more fully and not taking that piece of Tyson’s history into account when I wrote about him. Each of us has our own history out of which we speak and write — but it is not the only history — and to those for whom I may have raised a painful part of their own history, by not being more thoughtful and careful, I apologize.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert